This was, of course, little more than an ideology of conquest conveniently available to justify the occupation of another people’s lands. Colonists occasionally admitted as much when they needed to defend their right to lands originally purchased from Indians: in order for Indians legitimately to sell their lands, they had first to own them.
This passage is in response to the previous paragraph which had outlined John Winthrop’s theories of private ownership of land which he divided into two types: you use the land therefore it is yours or you don’t own use the land and therefore it up to a court to decide. Well, surely, that sounds reasonable enough to a point. At least as things existed back then when “use” of land basically meant growing food so you don’t die. OF course, there is a significant problem with the other part of the theory: the Indians had no courts or legal system—or, at least, none legitimately in the eyes of the colonists—and so therefore this court which would adjudicate ownership meant the British legal system. Hmm, wonder which side they were likely to rule for?
“An incredible amount of wood is really squandered in this country for fueld; day and night all winter, or for nearly half the year, in all rooms, a fire is kept going.”
Kalm was a naturalist visiting New England in the mid-1700’s. He had come here from, you may have guessed, Scandinavia; Sweden, to be precise. It is a known fact that the Swedes and others from that area grown remarkably used to intensely cold weather at an early age, so one might be willing to discount his critique based on the fact that the colonists were just a bunch of British weather wimps. And while that may be so, it misses the point entirely. It is true that New England winters are not exactly a vacation in Jamaica, but even that is beside the bigger point. Look at what he wrote, in the middle of the 18th century, not just before the arrival of fossil fuel or coal-powered steam or electricity or even the sperm whale oil.
He is talking about plain old-fashioned cutting down trees to put into your fireplace, set on fire and warm your house. And even then, before colonists even yet knew what America was, what Kalm is describing is the ongoing tendency for Americans to consume natural resources at an astonishing wasteful rate. It is in the country’s DNA. And it does not look likely stop any time soon. Eventually, of course, we’re going to reach a point where the next big thing fuel source isn’t so readily available that it can be wasted so inefficiently.
English fixity sought to replace Indian mobility; here was the central conflict in the way Indians and colonists interacted with their environments. The struggle was over two ways of living and using the seasons of the year, and it expressed itself in how two peoples conceived of property, wealth, and boundaries on the landscape.
What the author is discussing here is the difference between the Indian attitude toward property ownership and that of the British. Remember, that this is a period of history on the precipice of radical change. Nobody knew for sure what was coming, but big idea theorists like John Locke and Adam Smith detected something was in the air and wrote reams of philosophical outlines about the fundamental importance of owning land. Keep in mind that those guys who signed that piece of paper about all men being created equal also wrote composed America’s voter suppression legislation: only white males—who owned land—were allowed to vote. Therefore all this British obsession with private ownership is not just directed toward whom they were planning on taking it from—Indians—but who they were planning on giving it to.
